Let Your Gluten Free Voice Be Heard!

As many of you know, in addition to my Hold The Gluten site, I’ve been blogging for General Mills Live Gluten Freely. I am a huge fan of General Mills and the strides they have taken to offer gluten free products “mainstream”. In a few weeks, I have the amazing opportunity to travel to the General Mills location and get a gluten-free glimpse of the Betty Crocker Portrait Kitchen (O.M.G!!!).

Here’s where YOU come in!! Alone, I am one gluten-free voice, but together we can make a difference in our gluten-free community.

If you could ask the Gluten Free Team at General Mills anything at all (or put in a gluten free food product request), what would it be?

This is your chance to be heard! Share your honest opinion, feedback, questions and/or comments. I will share your thoughts with the General Mills Team next month. As my thank you, you’ll automatically be entered to win a fantabulous box of Gluten Free Bisquick! Comment deadline is November 2, 2010.

50 Comments (and one trackback)

Muffin mixes; refrigerated biscuits/cookies you just pop into the oven; crackers!, pretzels, or other snack items; cookie dough ice cream; ready made frozen meals such as lasagna or some of the Green Giant frozen vegetable meals that actually have SAUCE in them.

I would love to see the Strawberry Chex come back, those things were amazing. I would also like to see ready to bake cookies and more ready to eat meals at a decent price. Love the GF Devil’s Food Cake Mix 🙂 Thank you for that!!!

General Mills- thank you for stepping up and actually making products that are gluten free… they seem far and few between when it comes to packaged foods. I would love to see better product availability (I found one box of GF Bisquick at one store about 2 months ago and haven’t found another one yet). More variety, tastier products, maybe more affordable prices- that’s always appreciated. Definitely offering “club sizes” would be great.

gf refrigerated cinnamon rolls in a tube. You know the ones, where you twist the tube, separate the rolls into a buttered pan, and bake them? Those. Please. I really miss good, chewy, warm cinnamon rolls without two days of advance planning.

I am so thankful for GM commitment to making products gluten-free. I don’t know what we would eat around here if it weren’t for Chex!!! Good tasting gluten-free cereals are so hard to find. I would love to see GM make some other cereals. I miss eating Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios and would love to see a way to make those gluten-free. Also, I realize Kellogg’s, not GM, makes Rice Krispies, but since they aren’t willing to make them without malt so that they would be gluten-free, I would LOVE to see GM come out with their own Rice Crisp cereal that doesn’t use barley malt so that it could be gluten-free. I think there would be a LOT of people interested in it. We could make rice krispie treats and scotcharoos, and many other things again if we could just have that cereal!
The other thing I would enjoy is some gluten-free refrigerated cinnamon rolls, (like your regular ones that you pop open and bake, then ice). Refrigerated pizza crust or breadstick dough would be sooo nice too!

just reading the comments above – i love the idea of bulk sizing for the bisquick mix and “slice and bake” cookies that are ready to go in the oven right out of the package. Also the GF Chex mix is a great idea! The only other thing I could think of would be GF granola bars AND high protein GF whey protein bars that don’t use sugar alcohols like the think thin bars do – those sugar alcohols upset MANY stomachs out there!

First, big kudos to General Mills for greatly increasing their GF offerings, especially among the Chex cereals and Bisquick brands. But a serious question: for better or worse, there’s a big fad/trend component to GF these days, and I fear some companies are jumping on the bandwagon to capitalize. Is GM in it for the long haul, after the trend subsides, for us medically GF consumers?

Better granola bars/things to snack on that are semi-healthy. I know there are those hard as rocks or dry as the dessert granola bars, but I’m talkin’ ones that are soft and chewy and yummy all at the same time.

We love Corn Chex & Honey Nut Chex, and especially love that I can buy both at the regular grocery store without having to go to the specialty store. We would love more snack bar options, rice crisp cereal & corn flakes. We are very picky about our pancake mix and have shopped around for our favorite kind. Our Publix doesn’t carry GM’s Bisquick yet, but I’ll ask for it after reading so many positive comments. Thank you for bringing reasonably priced gluten free to the regular market!

I live in Australia and when I first heard about the Betty Crocker Gluten Free range, I went looking for it.
Here is the response to my enquiry that I received from General Mills:
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Unfortunately, the Betty Crocker gluten free range is not available in Australia at this time. We are unable to import and sell the American gluten free range of Betty Crocker products to Australian/New Zealand consumers, as the range contains genetically modified ingredients (not permitted by FSANZ- Food Standards Australia & New Zealand). Unfortunately online sales for Betty Crocker products sold in the US are unavailable to consumers outside of the US.

What are the chances that General Mills can remove the genetically modified ingredients from these products so that we can all enjoy them without icky lab creations? This is enough to encourage me NOT to buy these products even though I live somewhere I can. Kudos to Australia and New Zealand for keeping it real.

Thank you for getting GF products on the shelves of “regular” stores, not just health food stores! I would love to see GF refrigerated, raedy to bke cinnamon rolls and bisquits. Also, a couple of GF varieties of more adult cereals would be great.
In general, not just for GF products, please reduce the sugar without adding artificial sweeteners. Yoghurt is a big one for us, it’s very hard to find a LOW sugar, not NO sugar, yoghurt.

Thank you General Mills! Thank you!!! Thank you!!! You make life a lot easier to be GF! I love the Chex cereal! If I could ask for one more wish it would be to have more of your cereals to be gluten free.

I love all the gluten free products that GM’s has come out with so far, but I would love to see either a larger box of this bisquick because its awesome!! But I would really enjoy some Chex mixes that are gluten free -those are always great crowd pleasers and also they are great as snacks to bring to school, work etc. I’m also a photographer so I am always looking for GF goodies that I can easily throw into my camera bag, because you never know if there will be GF options at the weddings.

Also some more GF versions of the Betty Crocker mixes would be wonderful. I love the chocolate cake mix the best – perfect for some tasty cupcakes. Actually I think when I get married, I’ll be using that mix to make cupcakes instead of a cake 🙂

A big thanks to GM for expanding our gf choices at the ‘regular’ supermarket.

I’d love to request a bigger box of Bisquick! and as much as we love the chex cereals, some of the sugary cereals would be a nice treat for my little gal.

I would also ask GM (really all manufacturers) to choose a specific spot on all packaging to indicate whether or not a product is gf. It would make life so much easier to know that I can always look on the back of the package, upper right hand corner, or something like that.

I would love to see some of their refigerator and frozen goods offered as gluten free! I would love to pop open a can and have biscuits, cinnamon rolls, crescent rolls, cookies and even their frozen rolls and biscuits as well as their pie crusts! Come to think of it their muffin mixes, brownie mixes and cake mixes would make nice additions too!!!!!

thank you for including gluten-free products in your fine line of goods. My first brownie in years tasted wonderful.
I try to eat as healthy as possible living gluten free and would KINDLY REQUEST USING W H O L E GRAINS AND LESS SUGAR IN FUTURE EXPERIMENTATIONS AND NEW PRODUCT TESTS. My sincere gratitude for listening. Angelina G

I’ve only been living a G-Free lifestyle for a few weeks, but I’m so impressed by what a great job General Mills has done to make my life easier so far!! I wish all companies would be so friendly and helpful to those of us trying to eat GF!

If I had to make a request, it would be for larger boxes of the GF Bisquick (I used a whole box just trying to make coffee cake!) and maybe some prepackaged GF chex mix, too.

First, I want to say thank you for all you’ve done for us gf folks. I would love to see you create: cheez-its, buggles, muffins, cookies (already made), buns, and all the lovely things that we gf folks still can’t get or can’t afford. It is such a blessing to be able to buy a “mainstream” product. It helps me feels not quite so “different”. Thanks again.

I would like for you to use healthier flours. White rice flour blends just don’t cut it. And, because of it being a rice flour blend, the Gluten Free Bisquick does not make good biscuits. It does, however, make for a mean fried fish coating!! Nom!

Any plans for making more GF dessert box mixes? Everything is chocolate…and don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate, but I’d love to see and would pay for some other mixes like lemon dessert or plain sugar cookie mix.
Ooh, and I second/third/fouth the pop and bake biscuits, rolls, etc! I’d love me some sausage gravy and biscuits! And the bigger boxes of the Bisquick!

But, on that note, thanks for recognizing a need and serving our population. I for one appreciate it very much!

i have never seen the GF Bisquick… so a larger market on that item would be great. My request would be for products that are not just GF but also Casein Free. Alot of times people who have a gluten intolerance also have a sensitivity to dairy (milk, casein, whey). This would open the products up to even more people.

I can’t thank you enough for the gluten-free products that I can now afford to buy at my local grocers (especially the Bisquick). I would like to see dinner rolls (i.e. crescent rolls), refrigerated would be great). Thanks again and keep it coming. I think more and more people are leaning toward gluten-free for a healthier food choice.

I agree with so many of the above responses-but the main things I would love to see is frozen (or refrigerated) biscuit or roll dough-or even small loaves of GF frozen bread you could just pop in the oven. Also liked the cinnamon roll idea! Larger and more “cost-efficient” boxes would be good too. Thank you so much for taking the GF plunge-hope this will encourage many others to follow suit!

I am so excited about the Gluten Free Bisquick! Of course I live in a fairly rural area so it will be a while before its available on the shelves here but, there’s always the internet. I would like to have more “convenience” products available as some of the other posts mentioned. Something I could just pop in the oven would be great. But I’m not complaining now that we have have Bisquick. In fact, I’m jumping for joy!

I left a comment yesterday but, I don’t see it here so I’m leaving one again. I agree that convience products for those of us who can’t have gluten would be great. To have the convenience to just pop something in the oven would be fabulous.

I will say that I really liked this product when me and my kids started to eat the pancakes. I made the biscuit recipe and made bread crumbs for the chicken nuggets. I would like to say that I kinda like http://www.namastefoods.com/ pancakes a little better. They are light and fluffy great tasting. They taste just like regular pancakes. I know I will buy this again. If I run out of this one I know I also can get the other.

I agree with alot of these posts: Larger box of bisquick (this has been HUGE in our house since being dx 1 month ago) More variety of gf cereal Muffin mixes–that taste like muffins 🙂 croissant and cinnamon rolls (in tubes) I am overwhelmed by the gf issue, but it is awesome that a “regular” food name is doing what they can to help with this!!

THanks for posting this. My 4 year old son is celiac and it’s great to find things that he can eat and that I don’t have to cook separately. I like you entire website and have added it to one of my favorites now! Appreciate your efforts too. Berta.

If possible, can you make refrigerator biscuits without aluminum in the baking powder? and same with the gluten free bisquick mix, can you please take the aluminum out of there as well? thank you so much.

I make my own pancake mix from a recipe from allrecipes.com. They have gluten free recipes on their web site. I like them also because they have reviews from people who have tried the recipes, including ways that they have tweaked them. I made the dry part of the mix and packed it in my checked luggage when I went to Arizona in March. When we stayed in a time-share, we had pancakes for breakfast. It doesn’t take long to make the dry mix especially if you make more than one batch.